Angels

 Stars, snowflakes, and Angels. These all seem to make such wonderful Christmas gifts. This page shows my Angels.

Most of the small photos below link to larger ones, just click the photos.

2022	I am getting ahead of Christmas this year thanks to Beth Reece. She designed a beautiful comb quilled angel and also made a tutorial for it. You can find the tutorial on Ann Martin's website, All Things Paper. I gave it a try and right away loved it. I made four but could not get them to be as fat as Beth's are. To the right are photos of Beth's angels. Below are mine.
The first ones I made. They came out long and skinny. Hmmm. I think the 1/4" wide paper I used for these practice angels was too stiff.	My next two angels were from normal 1/8" quilling strips. This helped with the roundness of the body. They are glued to chalked vellum. This adds stability to the ornament.	The light shines through the vellum. I usually glue my finished outline but sometimes the completed ornament. I use vellum and other backings such as card stock. After the glue is dry, I cut it out close to the outside edges.
One will be for a gift in 2023, the other for my tree. One ornament is white and pink. The other is cream and pink.	I make gift/storage boxes for the ornaments. I use recycled jewel boxes I find at thrift stores and rummage sales. This one needed to be covered with paper. Many times a small quill or cut out picture of the ornament will cover up the label. Proper storage of any quilled ornament will help keep them nice year after year. And a photo of what goes into the box helps me put away Christmas!
2020	My workshop for the 2020 NAQG convention was to be an Angel ring ornament. It is made using several techniques. I made several angel rings to work out instructions and for samples. The conference had to be cancelled but I have lots of new ornaments!
2019	gilded paper angel	lacy angel
The start of a 3d angel. Click on the picture to see my method.		back of angel
hanging as an ornament	cut off the hanging loop to stand	shades of white
My music paper angels..	backs	The inspiration from Zen Quilling.
	I quilled the heads, wings, halos, and arms. The arms are spirals with little hands glued at the base. I glued the arms onto the back of the triangle, then the wings over the ends. Secure the halos well and add a hanging loop.	I printed sheet music which I had scanned and overlaid with lyres. I used matte photo paper for the triangles. Thank you Zen Quilling for your idea.
	front	back
A new captured angel. I attached the head, halo, and body together before sliding it into the glass globe. Then the wings were put onto the body with the help of tweezers.
2018	A third style of Captured Angel	Also nice without the glass ornament.
2017
One of the classes at the NAQGCON 2017 convention was taught by Ann-Marie Lafrenaye, sweet little 3-d angel.	Here is my class project...
		I don't put faces on my angels and this is the first angel having long hair. The hair is made by spiraling a narrow strip on a needle tool. The wings are made with a technique from straw crafting called "spreuers".  Here, paper strips are used instead of  flat straw splints. For more information, look in Barbara Fitch's 1998 Decorative Straw Craft: Swiss Straw Work, Embroidery and Marquetry book.
2016
This angel was inspired by Zarzillos, a company in Spain. Their web site shows only jewelry but apparently a quilled angel was designed as well. I like the swooping curves. Their original: My adaptations are to the right and below.
		I seldom use glitter. The cream and yellow angel has glitter dust, "dusted" sparingly. Nice in person, hard to catch sparkling with a camera.
I love Karen Marie's white with lavender polka dot paper. I made five snowflakes and several angels using it. Click on the small photos to go to the large pictures. These little dots are hard to see in such a small picture! Click here for the snowflakes.
2 sizes of the same angel		3-D. Bell like.
		The angel to the left is a modified Karen-Marie angel. Beth Reece was the inspiration for the largest, cream and polka dots with the double halo. There are lots of angels on the Internet and I may have used some as my base. I try to keep track when possible. If you see your original idea, please let me know. Credit is happily given when possible.
2015
My last angel of 2014 is the same design as the only angel I made in 2015. I gave the 2014 one as a gift in December, 2015 without taking a photo. Bob said it was his favorite, maybe I could make another one. I hurried to do just that while I could remember what the angel looked like! It is made from vintage sheet music, hand cut to 1/4" wide strips. After shaping the body, glue must be spread all over the inside to harden the shape. It is the only way to retain it. The wings are made of the same 1/4" wide strips which I crimped. The face is a strip of the sheet music without any printing.
2014
	To the left is my Quilling Owl's angel, finally in white! He is so pretty but I do love all my colored angels, too.
	I made this little set of four angels for Bob's sister, Diane, for Christmas. Shipping and storage is always an issue with quilled items. I found a deep jewelry box and inset a piece of card stock, forming a little square, in one corner of the box. The 3-d angel stands up in this space while the other 3 angels can lay flat in the rest of the box.
This is the Captured Angel I made for Anders' family for Christmas in 2014. The paper is hand-cut vintage sheet music. It is 1/8" wide. The angel is again based on Quilling Owl's design. I painted the face and edges with gold paint. I did not seal it and some has fallen off. Lessons always learned! The 2 photos are front and back. I like to round out the face.
		These angels and the snowflake are made from my Berenstain Bears story book which I am re-purposing for quilling. The angel to the right in the photos is a 3D angel -- like a little bell. A warning: when cutting your own strips, be sure they are even. I used a paper cutter for the ones used in making the tight coil angel. The guillotine cutter let the strip move just a bit, giving me uneven strips. And you can see this unevenness. My normal (and preferred) method is to use a cutting mat and snap knife with a transparent quilter's ruler.
	And another crimped angel with a more robust body and wings with the beehive quilling at the top.
Second attempt on the first crimped paper angel... I cut the body off and adjusted the tear drop, re-glued it and put the body back in place. Much better.
	This angel was inspired by Beth Reece and her use of a crimper. It adds so much dimension. Ms. Reece's angel is far more elaborate than mine but from her angel comes my use of crimped paper.   I need more structure near the top of the body to make this angel more sturdy. Pretty but not right yet. The nice thing about quilling is that mistakes and experiments that don't quite work are cheap to do over! I have found gold trim paper is difficult to use. Stay tuned for my next attempt...
Quilling Owl's angels in colors... maybe I should make white ones, too!
	This is a Captured Angel. Like the captured snowflakes, he is in a round glass globe ornament. I used Quilling Owl's angel as the inspriation for the design. As always, what I end up quilling is sometimes more, sometimes less different from the inspiration, and for this angel Quilling Owl receives the thanks.
	Left photo:  The Karen Marie angel. Note the heads. I used different lengths of strips to get the size I like best. I prefer the center angel. Right photo: This photo shows the front and back of 2 tiny Karen Marie angels. I push out the tight coil head and glue the back (concave side). Both sides look nice and I like the added dimension. Another thing I normally do is to push my needle tool into the center of the head to push the crimp to the side. Big difference! Do this before you glue.
More tiny Karen Marie style angels. Here, I used my own 1/8th inch quilling strips rather than her paper from the System Kit I bought in her shop. The narrow paper makes for a very delicate angel.		This photo shows a front and a back. I am striving to get them to look good both sides. I am also using a halo as it gives me a way to hang them as Christmas Tree ornaments.
	I cut up a page of vintage sheet music to get the strips for this angel. If you look in thrift shops, you should be able to find old sheet music or books of music. Look for songs that have LOTS and LOTS of tightly spaced scales, notes, Treble Clefs, etc. Your finished project will look better.
	This angel has been captured inside a glass oval globe. I only bought one at Michael's last year. I will be getting more! It was a bit tricky to work with but the end result is wonderful. I used Karen Marie's angel. I needed to make her medium angel just a bit bigger to adequately fill the globe.
	This summer I was so happy to be able to stop at Karen Marie Klips, the paper crafting and quilling store in Denmark. I bought enough to make me worry about paying excess baggage charges but I found so much I simply NEEDED! And naturally Bob wanted me get it all. One of the things I purchased was her Angel System. It makes 3 sizes. The largest used wider strips. Even the tiny angel is made from strips a bit wider than the normal quilling strip of 1/8" here in the US.	I have changed mine just slightly. The instructions put a curl of hair on either side of the head. My mother always said angels are male so I did not want to use the curls. Also, I made a halo by wrapping the barrel of my slotted quilling tool several times, gluing the end, squishing the circle and then gluing the inner starting point.

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